Nymphpunk 20XX #3
Luckily, the container wasn't far off.
A warehouse where guards in black were loading and hauling cargo. I opened my business bag.
“Kwang-kwangi, it's your turn. Sorry you were stuck in there so long.”
Inside, Kwang-kwangi had been curled up obediently, and the moment he spotted me he waved his front legs back and forth.
━Hio-ong…!
“Go film some footage for me. So the strike team can mobilize fast. Here — press this button and everything gets recorded from now on. Got it?”
━Kwang-kwang…!
“Mana Deployment.”
I spread my mana outward. Soon, tuning his RGB values with practiced precision, Kwang-kwangi matched the color of the surrounding scenery and faded into invisibility. The moment he crept — ssslk — between the containers and slipped out of sight—
“Well, what do we have here. The Doctor's radio said there'd be an intruder, but look at that — an actual spy. Where'd they send you from?”
Clack.
Whoooosh—.
He was a man wearing a black gas mask. His whole body was sheathed in tactical armor, though one of his arms was entirely mechanical. Even at a glance, he was a serious professional. A-rank at the minimum. Was this the bastard who'd stolen the Bifrost and bolted?
Click.
I heard something being loaded. Instinctively, I ducked my head, and a mechanical arm came flying right over it.
Fwoom — THUNK!
The arm buried itself in the container behind me. The thug reeled it back in with a wire and spoke.
“Ho ho. You dodged that?”
“I used to know a guy with a mechanical arm. He was twice as fast as you and twice as strong—”
Tat—.
“—take THAT!”
I kicked the ground with everything I had. Pebbles, sand, and gravel sprayed up and worked their way into the joints of the mechanical arm. Naturally, the thug just laughed — heh heh.
“You think a modern fourth-gen prosthetic's gonna break from a few pebbles? That's not some first-gen heap of scrap, buddy.”
“Probably not.”
But in that instant, I'd closed the distance straight into his chest. I drove my fist into his solar plexus with my full weight behind it, and in the same motion hammered left and right hooks across his face.
THUD, THWACK-THWACK!
A rapid combination. The A-rank thug staggered backward. He touched the gas mask on his face with one hand and chuckled.
“Well, well. Crafty little thing, aren't you? Unusually good at hand-to-hand for a modern-generation awakener. That would've hurt a lot more if I weren't armored. Come to think of it, I do know someone who moves like that. Say — you wouldn't happen to be Ha Ildo?”
“…You know me?”
“Of course. How could anyone not know a celebrity like you? But what's with the getup? Glasses? Ahh — this is a problem. Hold on a second. Don't worry, I'm not pulling any tricks here.”
Swish.
The man pulled something like a walkie-talkie from his coat and contacted someone.
“Hey, Doctor. We've got a problem. Get over here. Fast. I don't know what to do here. Totally unexpected situation. That intruder you mentioned — come take a look at who it is.”
Calling for backup?
Funny how 'no tricks' lasted right up until the phone call. Of course, I'd taken advantage of the moment myself, drawing the beam saber from my hip.
“Not exactly a weapon meant for fighting people, but it'll hurt like hell if it connects.”
The beam saber was an anti-monster weapon — built to cleave through magical beasts. Its firepower was never meant to be swung at a human being.
And right at that moment—
Thump.
Someone dropped down from high above. A white lab coat, a cybernetic plague doctor's mask — and the fact that they'd approached without so much as a whisper of presence marked them as a formidable opponent indeed. The figure was slender and curvy. A woman, then?
Plague doctor, hence the codename “Doctor”?
The real problem was that she seemed to be every bit the mechanical-armed man's equal. The odds had tilted overwhelmingly against me.
“Uh — wha — uh?”
Just as I tensed, the woman was the one who panicked. Her voice was distorted, but the flustered confusion behind it wasn't hidden at all.
“Doctor, what's the play? It's Ha Ildo.”
“What on earth is going on? Hmm, this is awkward. Ha Ildo was the first-ever secondary awakener — they used to call his body the 'Second Awakening,' you know? He's even got a medal.”
Did they know a lot about me? These people had serious intel. What kind of organization was this? My wariness deepened by the second. By now Oinoi would have contacted Seo Yerim. How long would it take her to get here? Stalling for as much time as possible was the smart play. And I had to wait for Kwang-kwangi to finish filming, too.
He'd already slipped beyond the twenty-meter edge of my mana domain, so I had no idea what he was doing — but still.
Sssslk.
I pushed my mana out even farther. Past twenty meters. More. MORE!
Fifty meters. Dizziness washed over me from the strain of forcing my mana to spread this far — but I found him. Kwang-kwangi's biological rhythm. I linked straight into his mind and moved his body for him.
At last I caught sight of it: something like a gate of machinery being loaded into the containers. Yes! All I had to do now was transmit the footage, and Telos's strike team would mobilize to this location.
“Just give up.”
And then the woman called “Doctor” cheerfully surrendered the situation outright. Even her mechanical-armed partner seemed flustered.
“Wait, seriously? After coming all this way?”
“Ha Ildo's real specialty was never rift exploration — it was hand-to-hand combat. Fight the man who once made Kang Cheolmin take second place in a one-on-one, and we're the ones who'll get hurt.”
“Aw, come on, isn't that all ancient history? If they fought again right now, Kang Cheolmin might actually beat that perpetual D-rank. Well — not that Cheolmin's alive anymore.”
“The problem is that Telos's strike team will be here before that matters. Worst case, the Witch of Fire comes with them. Right now — from what I can sense — the city feels off. A mana cluster is moving this way from about twenty kilometers out. Illuminate team, probably.”
Was that plague doctor… eavesdropping on the whole city? No — it was more like she'd sharpened her senses to city-wide scale. A detection-type ability that powerful? Didn't they say Weber, Germany's S-rank sensor, could hear every sound within a city district? Meaning this woman's ability usage was at least on par with an S-rank?
Good grief, another awakener that strong. Unregistered? Or a foreigner? The body hugging close beneath that doctor's coat was certainly… built to foreign standards.
I marveled at it in many ways, and grew all the more tense. That was when—
“Ah, this is SO annoying!”
BOOM!
The man stamped his foot. That alone was enough to crack the asphalt clean through. Incredible power. Then he grumbled from behind his gas mask:
“Damn it all. I spent over a month undercover in this ridiculous organization, and now I have to walk away? Ugh — fine. Let's go. Move.”
They were just going to leave?
Both a blessing and a disaster. If scum like this got to strut around free, how were decent citizens like me supposed to sleep with our legs stretched out at night? These two had to be brought in. Now.
“You two aren't going anywhere!”
“I have to say, I admire a man who doesn't know when to quit. Ildo, I'm actually a fan of yours. It's a shame to meet like this, but — until next time, goodbye.”
Clank.
From inside her lab coat, the plague doctor produced something like a can. She pulled the pin and hurled it, and with a hiiissss— a thick purple smoke began billowing out.
“…Poison—!?”
I hurriedly stopped breathing and shut my eyes. I had to keep as much of it off my body as possible. The problem was that while I was neutralized, the villains would be escaping.
“Will that gas hold Ha Ildo?”
“It'll hold him for at least five minutes.”
“Stay right there!”
Swish.
I snatched the sheath knife from my hip and hurled it toward the sound of retreating footsteps. But I must have missed — no further sound came back.
A brute with a steel arm. And a woman called “Doctor.”
Well — at least the body-cam got everything, right, Kwang-kwangi?
“Yes, Minister. It failed. There was interference. Yes, there was nothing we could do — Telos had already set countermeasures in place. Yes. It looks difficult.”
Kang Cheolmin had no choice but to make his excuses about the botched operation. Finally, the call cut off.
“Ugh, we are so dead. You think they're gonna cut our discretionary budget? There goes my whole month. At this point our only real option is pressuring the corporations through Lee Jeonghun. Hey — by the way, Doctor, what about your mask? It got pierced, didn't it?”
“Tell me about it. If we'd actually fought, one of the two of us might've ended up seriously hurt. You and I just don't sync well, Cheolmin.”
Yu Ari stared at the sheath knife embedded in her mask.
Dead center of her forehead. She'd nearly died.
And strangely, that was what moved her. Because in that hopelessly lopsided situation, Ha Ildo had given it everything he had.
Anyone else would have run. But he didn't. He really is something else.
Then Kang Cheolmin spoke up.
“That Ha Ildo — first time seeing him in a while, and his edge hasn't dulled one bit. Not that I wouldn't still win if we actually fought. But hey, didn't they say he was C-rank? He was pushing the absolute ceiling of C-rank out there.”
“Looked like it. He was practically knocking on B-rank's door.”
“Not that he's noticed it himself, knowing him. But it's only been what, a few days since he hit C? And he's already about to break into B? Shouldn't we step in before this snowballs into something bigger?”
'Step in?'
Yu Ari felt an odd chill. And stepping in at this stage felt, to her, like clipping a sprout that had only just begun to grow. So she shrugged it off.
“That looks fast if you're only thinking short-term. Look long-term instead. Ten years to B-rank? That's a completely normal story. It's nothing.”
“Hmm, when you put it that way, maybe. Still, he's got real talent. What do you say we toss a recruitment feeler his way? We're always short-staffed these days. Hell, we're so desperate we took in somebody like Lee Jeonghun. Ari, wouldn't you want to work alongside Ildo too?”
“…No. Ildo doesn't fit with all this sneaking around. He's like the sun, you know? He likes being in the spotlight.”
“Even so! You could at least ask him quietly. It's not like we do anything bad — we're public servants, paid with tax money! Sure, nobody gives us credit and the work is filthy, but we're saving the world here!”
“…….”
─Team Patriot: a unit made up entirely of awakeners ranked A or higher.
Public servants to the bone, they were eternally underpaid and perpetually understaffed.